A book update…
People always ask and I never tell much of anything (”OK,” “Fine.”), but every so often, it seems necessary to do this.
So, on Thursday, I started a new schedule, whereby I’m doing cardio and Bikram yoga every morning, after which I plan to work on the book. The idea all along had been to spend four days reading the last draft of the book, and then start rewriting it on Monday. But, I was enjoying it so much, I finished a day early.
I realize this might seem a bit strange to people, enjoying my own book, since well, I wrote it. But, here’s the thing about rewriting… I always started at the beginning. So, every time, I would edit chapter one, two, three… and then get off-track for whatever reason. Needless to say, the latter half of the book was like reading a book by someone else it has been so long since I read this stuff.
I was actually laughing out loud in many places and, toward the end, I kept reading faster and faster (like I do with most novels), because I wanted to see how it ended. There have been many drafts and many endings, so I honestly forgot which one this version had, heh.
Most importantly, I have the clearest vision of the book now that I have ever had. With this reading, I came up with two new things to bury earlier that will make things happening later come with a bigger payoff as a result.
I would have to say that I finally feel like I’m at the point now where I’m just removing the stuff that “isn’t the book” and adding stuff that needs to be in the book, but it’s all gravitating to an existing vision, which may very well be for the first time.
I dumped all of the framing device nonsense that has always been my biggest hurdle. I do question why someone is telling me a story when I read a novel, like… why is this guy just starting to talk to me, without telling me why?! But I think the problem with a framing device is that (at my current writing level), it robs the element of surprise from the narrator. If the narrative is told from a future perspective, whether that future happens after the events in the book or during them at a later time, everything up until that point has no mystery to the person telling the story. And, I’d rather not give up the mystery, and tell the best story I can with that caveat.
Some thing that need fixing (future book reviewers, here is your ammunition if you think the finished product doesn’t resolve these known quantities adequately!). And, keep in mind, this stuff is all coded to make sense to me, not you. At first, I thought, isn’t it masturbatory to blog about stuff that has no use for anyone but me? But then, I figured, well once the book is published, this will be fun for my stalkers. Not to mention, a non-masturbatory blog entry is an oxymoron anyway.
So, here’s the stuff I need to fix:
- Remember what Marilyn Manson told me about people who create a public persona: “I always get pissed off when people say ‘Is this really you?’ Well, if it’s is an act, at some point in my life it has consumed and it’s no longer an act, because it’s all that I know.”
- The counterpoint stuff I learned from Madame Bovary can be used with great application at certain points in the novel.
- The characters all seem to learn the same things independently (e-mail, etc.), and then talk about them. This leads to scenes of exposition followed by scenes of dialogue. Yawn. Get people together as often as possible to learn stuff at the same time so they can learn and comment in real time together. That will tighten a lot of shit up. Get them doing a third thing independent of learning and commenting and then we’re really talking.
- Just to be clear, those two guns need to be buried early. (Guns is a Chuck term, there are no actual guns in the novel).
- The humanity of/empathy for the protagonist needs to be established early, or else we don’t care why he’s doing things. Similarly, the two lead characters need more interaction up front, show their relationship building over time. Too abrupt.
- Really paint beautiful tertiary characters, they open the book up a lot more. But, honestly, the story doesn’t need them for all that much narrative. So hit them, make them memorable and fun, and dump them.
- This isn’t sci-fi, paragraphs of exposition are boring. How did the character learn this information that he/she seems to just be blathering at us? Why aren’t we learning it with them, preferably in some amusing manner?
- As we know first-hand, writing a book is boring, so why do we see the character writing his book within a book? Who cares? Yawn.
- Lose the existential angst. Tiresome. (Ties in to Manson note above).
- Lose the protagonist’s second-guessing. (Who would think this would work?!) Again: Yawn.
- Use the internal framing devices sparingly. They often seem to just be a recipe for inviting tangental information into the book without having to think hard. There are myriad ways to get that information in legitimately, find them. Only good to compress time.
- Redesign the office/studios so the characters can be seeing what is going on in the workout studios while talking, whether that is video cameras or an architectural tweak. People having conversation with something else to cut to, refer to = interesting. Two talking heads = boring.
- Debate the merits of the character’s book appearing/not appearing anywhere in the actual book. It used to be interstitial content, possibly a “flipper” (whereby people could flip the book over and read the character’s non-fiction book separately). Current draft just references it with very little pull-out. Just needs a decision, as that affects how much/little appears in the novel itself.
- Character no longer gets “A-ha!” moment in act two, so tone that stuff down, we’ll hit it later for bigger payoff.
And, that’s all that hits me for right now.
But the upside is, I am rather pleased with how much I liked what I read. If you’ve followed this blog in the past, I’m not certain how long it’s been since you read something along those lines.
So, I’m going to take tomorrow off, just do my workouts, let this stuff simmer for a day, and then jump right in on Monday morning.
